The late Vincent, a formerly-feral Phoenicia cat who adopted columnist Tom Rinaldo when he moved into the neighborhood.
Vincent arrived at our new property pretty much the same time we did. At least it seems that way now looking back. When we moved into our new Phoenicia house, it wasn’t long before we spotted him; a black shadow behind our home, usually in motion.
We didn’t think much of it at the time. It was just a neighborhood cat, no doubt exploring some new territory that had finally opened up now that the dogs that lived with the former owner were gone. We had two cats of our own that were free to go outside during daylight hours.
One of our cats, Squeak, had no problem with Vincent coming round, but her sister Amanda did. Amanda was territorial. We would head out to find Amanda acting menacing toward this black intruder. Vincent, on the other hand, would lie still in the grass about ten yards away from Amanda, hoping the whole thing would somehow blow over.
That’s when we tended to get our best looks at Vincent. Usually he just fled at first sight of us, but with Amanda in the equation he was reluctant to hand her that easy a victory. So he froze while we called off Amanda, and then melted away while her attention was on us. Sometimes he paused just long enough to make eye contact with us before leaving. His eyes were green searchlights that riveted us, even from a distance, in the brief instant before he fled.
That’s more or less how it stayed for years. Vincent was the black cat who sometimes used our yard. At first we assumed he belonged to some neighbor. But from talking with our neighbors, we discovered Vincent was a feral cat.
Maybe it was the way Vincent handled his encounters with Amanda that first won him sympathy from us, or maybe it was just that he had no real home. Our next door neighbor told us Vincent sometimes slept under their car.
We never fed him. Vincent looked like he was finding enough food to get by on, and given Amanda’s territorial tendencies it didn’t seem practical to try it. So it went for years, until Amanda passed. Vincent showed up more often then and became less afraid of us, at 40 feet. Then some heavy rains flooded our basement. The water table rose and moved in for several days.
We heard a new sound in the house: persistent faint cries of a cat in distress, audible from our ground floor. They grew louder as we entered the basement and then stopped. The last yowl seemed to come from a corner of our basement that has a deep raised crawlspace off it. We left some food there, and later it was gone.
So our bond with Vincent began: slow, cautious, and very deliberate on both ends, but always moving toward more intimacy. We were hesitant about taking on responsibility for another cat, and Vincent needed to be careful. He lived in a world where his life was always on the line. Vincent survived in it so long, with predators roaming every night, only because he was so cautious.
But Vincent was also brave enough to finally cross over the wild divide, to place his trust in us. Watching that process happen moved us in a profound way. Each step was conscious. Vincent deliberated over every risk he took. I swear we would sit and watch him think it over. His instincts almost always said; Run! But he didn’t always give in to them. Vincent wanted to trust us; it was just so hard, so potentially dangerous, to do.
It became clear to us that Vincent was a lonely soul. He began talking with us long before he let us touch him. He learned to come for meals on our sheltered front porch. We would call out to him, and from the distance somewhere out of sight, Vincent called back to us as he raced toward us. At first any petting of him was restricted to on that porch during meals, rear end only thank you very much. All our other encounters had to remain from ten or more feet away, but Vincent still talked with us every time we saw him.
Vincent stayed in our basement that winter, entering through a broken screen that we refused to repair. In the bitter cold he would linger after each meal, soaking in the warmth of our contact until my hands were too cold for me to stay outdoors. The second winter he became too sick to eat. He was suffering from conjunctivitis. We decided we had to trap Vincent or he would die, but feared if we failed he would never let us close to him again. A Havahart cage baited with treats worked, and we were able to bring Vincent to our vet.
Vincent slowly recovered and became an indoor cat. He never showed any interest in going out again. It took months to get Vincent to leave the room we set him up in at first. He soaked up the relative quiet and security of our home, almost from day one. From then on everything about living with humans was part of a learning curve for Vincent, even learning how to play, which he came to appreciate greatly. Vincent never stopped being cautious but his capacity to share love grew, as his trust kept increasing and his instincts subsided. Vincent began to purr whenever we just sat near him.
We lost Vincent to cancer a couple of months ago and we will never stop missing him. Janet calls him the most grateful animal she’s ever known, and it’s true. His love for us was palpable. Vincent always stared directly into our eyes, even from six inches away. It’s a gaze that will never be broken. It’s seared into us now.
Vincent was just one of dozens of feral cats who live and die outside in Phoenicia. It seems most every town has some, fast shadows that sometimes cross our path. Most of us simply ignore them, but there’s one local group that doesn’t. It’s the Phoenicia Cat Project. We found out Vincent was captured and released by them at a very young age, but not before being neutered first. Life can be hard for feral cats, but their desire to live is no weaker than our own. Unchecked breeding makes survival for most unlikely. Small acts of kindness can help feral cats who do survive live lives that are a little easier.
A neighbor friend volunteers with the Phoenicia Cat Project. It’s likely over the years Vincent had many meals at her home that she placed out for our neighborhood feral cats. The Phoenicia Cat Project provided the Havahart Trap that we used to save Vincent’s life. They lent us the large cage enclosure Vincent lived in (with the door wide open) during his first couple of months with us. We are very grateful for the ongoing work they do. You can reach them at http://www.petfinder.com/shelters/NY715.html if you want to help.
Tell them Vincent sent you.
Tom Rinaldo writes the Dispatches from Shandaken column for the Watershed Post's Shandaken page. Email Tom at tomrinaldo@watershedpost.com.
